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    Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (742 previous messages)

rshow55 - 10:09pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#743 of 757) Delete Message

There are very solid reasons why countermeasures for MD are thousands, tens of thousands, or MORE times cheaper to build than the MD systems themselves.

It is easy to have fairly large numbers of identical balloons - which each reflect light or radar just the same - with the warhead in only one of them. At best, an interception probability of 1/N , where N is the number of balloons. That's one easy countermeasure -- and a number of other countermeasures, that have also been discussed for years, are also easy.

Mazza, do you have a reasonable reason for questioning the paragraph above?

If you don't - this follows:

That make "missile defense" no reasonable defense - a huge expense for no real security.

Tests specially tailored for success can keep the engineers "justified" - - - "justified" for people who aren't looking very hard - but as far as US security is concerned - the program is worthless. MD353 rshow55 3/10/02 10:16pm

Proof of the word fake would take longer - what about the substance above?

lchic - 10:14pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#744 of 757)

No diversion ... no need to Shoot the Sherrif

Talking OPPORTUNITY COST ... how should world dollars be spent?

Destruction versus Construction
Water Supply is basic to civilization
Infrastructure enables self sufficiency
Limits unnecessary deaths
Figures big in each National History
Clean drinking water is basic to life!

rshow55 - 10:16pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#745 of 757) Delete Message

MD727 lchic 3/20/02 7:44pm ... MD728 rshow55 3/20/02 7:58pm
MD729 rshow55 3/20/02 8:32pm

rshow55 - 10:30pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#746 of 757) Delete Message

I'm against cancer. But that doesn't mean I have to be for "cancer cures" that don't work -- that can't work -- and that only serve to mislead --- and enrich the people who sell them.

I'd be for missile defense -- if there was a missile defense that made decent technical sense. But I'm against "missile defenses" that can't possibly work - - that only serve to mislead -- and enrich the people who sell them.

lchic - 10:50pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#747 of 757)

Just re-read this ... and Showalter's points above have a place .. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/15/opinion/15FISH.html notes that the 'common thought process' in the USA has set aside the 'reasoning and logics' of the 'other' ... Homelanders often don't have a world view.

lchic - 11:09pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#748 of 757)

When Nuclear War was 'born'

Words like 'blackmail'

Had emotional depth

As did 'Illegitimate'
Orphan and Adoption

Yet the world has moved on

People have expressed their
T R U E needs
the economy is richer
it conceeds
that there are better and best ways

Yet Nuclear Missiles ... Nuclear War

It's hanging there
Just as before !!

mazza9 - 11:27pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#749 of 757)
Louis Mazza

You still didn't identify your diversion commission source.

lchic - 04:54am Mar 22, 2002 EST (#750 of 757)

Whitewater - was a money wasting $73m diversion - that went on for years .. a diverson that took 'attention' from functioning government and made Americans look like a bunch of hoons in the process http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=277152 ... which Republican bully was behind it ?

lchic - 05:00am Mar 22, 2002 EST (#751 of 757)

Diversion: A spam poster had refs on the board (now cut) relating to a theory that 9/11 was a False Flag ... done by other than the labelled ones .. mazza9 3/21/02 11:27pm

The interesting thing re American domestic and foreign 'bad-happenings' is that there is NO obvious Truth apparent ... a mix of myths take over .. speculation becomes tabloid fodder ... decades down the track - the truth is never clear and obvious ... not even when the layers of lies are peeled back.

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